This is one of my best self portraits and photoshops, imho. I was inspired by the art in one of my most prized possessions, a copy of the essays of Michel de Montaigne by none other than Salvador Dali. And yes that is me, I took the gratuitous buttshot motif from Kevin Costner, my idol.

Below is the piece that inspired my original.

I was particularly predisposed to understand this piece because of my love and understanding of Plato. What Dali is here illustrating is the epiphany of the universe to Plato. Plato of course made the platonic solids and the dodecahedron represented the universe seeing as it had 12 sides and there are 12 houses in the zodiac. You remember that Plato came up with the metaphor of the cave to represent his concept of the causal world in which the monads, or ideal forms, from which all phenomena originate. He believed the ideas were immortal and that they pre existed things. First there was the idea of the thing and then the thing made in the image of the idea.

Dali obviously agreed with Plato as we see that he is showing him vindicated in his piece.

This symbolizes the strategic mind play of terrestrial minds. One side of the checkered floor dips off into a fiery hell while the other side disappears into a lavender fog. The floor itself hovers upon nothing, the mind that transcends the game rises above it and is not dependent on it for stability. The sun rises in one eye and sets in the other. The title is of the two names for the morning star and the evening star before it was known that they were one and the same. Seven rays of illumination come from the third eye.

I painted this piece with some Maori tribal designs and a sunset, it is very meaningful to me for many reasons not the least of which is the correlation with the in breaths and out breaths of Brahma, and his vamana being a swan. I identify with the black swan.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, one of my favorite authors wrote a book called the black swan about unpredictable events being the major mover of the stock market. The swan represents to me those unpredictable events. People are epistemicly arrogant they over value what they know and they undervalue what they don’t know and they bias mine to prove themselves correct and ignore evidence that they are wrong.

There is also a cognitive bias associated with it. If one thinks that all swans are white then anything that doesn’t directly confront that incorrect belief supports it. Which means if you see a black crow, or a pink flamingo it confirms your incorrect belief that all swans are white. This kind of thinking prevents people from detecting their own horse shit and it makes an environment rich for outliers, people and events you never see coming….

….LIKE MYSELF!!!

Just because it has never happened before that you know of, doesn’t mean that something is preventing it from happening. Life doesn’t have any narrative that it has to fulfill.

“Epiphany of One Self” is a visual homage to Proto-Indo European, combining the Caduceus with the Ida and Pingala of the yogic serpents, representing the Ajna Chakra, replacing the winged globe with the two-petaled lotus symbolizing the Garden of Eden or the Alchemical marriage and the atomic power released by the proper union of the male and female energies in oneself.

Joxua is a trained Jnani guru and has combined a vast amount of general and specific knowledge from religions and the occult. He has combined taoism, buddhism, hinduism and kabbalah. In this piece the ajna chakra has been modified so that the two petals are breasts. The sacred, secret, succor and the serpents suckle the sweet knowledge of the alchemical marriage. As one attains to the level of non duality.

(22) Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, “These infants being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom.” They said to him, “Shall we then, as children, enter the kingdom?” Jesus said to them, “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom.” ~gospel of thomas

He also felt it meaningful to incorporate the fascia into the symbol as the sushumna in place of the spine.

The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break.[20] Similar symbols were developed by different fascist movements. For example the Falange symbol is five arrows joined together by a yoke.[21]

It was also of interest that Joxua felt this piece was predictive of coming global events and he asked lynn marie le to post a time stamp on her blog. Shortly there after there was a fertilizer explosion in Texas and the boston bombings.